The sun shone most of the day today. The temps were only in the upper 30's but Chelsea and I had a great walk. With the sun shining on us I almost got too warm. We went for out walk shortly after Dick and I got back from grocery shopping.

I got to stay home most of the day after we got back from shopping. I cleaned the bathrooms. Then I spent the afternoon cutting and pasting the song for the Cancer benefit and just catching up on things in the computer. Tonight was choir practice, so I stopped to visit with Mother for a bit beforehand. Aunt Kathleen called while I was there. She is back at their site in North Carolina with Uncle Bob and still is enjoying remembering the surprise she gave Mother. She also had some news that was not so good. My Aunt MaryAnn, Uncle Roman's wife, had to have surgery this week. She had a very large tumor on an ovary that had grown so fast that her son, Tom, noticed a bulge in her abdomen and insisted that she see a doctor. They removed both ovaries and I believe the uterus, but they do not believe that it is malignant. That is a blessing. She is in a lot of pain, but that surgery does result in pain. Pray for a speedy recovery.

Now I want to tell you about the third Great Aunt, Jo, who is on the picture that I hope to have Jim scan for me tonight. Then I will paste it into the blog tomorrow.

These are,as I said, Grandpa Bowser's sisters. There was a forth,, Claire. I will tell you a bit about her tomorrow. She died in 1956 long before this picture was taken.

Anyway, about Aunt Jo. Josephine. She married Bob Cardwell. He was in insurance and quite successful. They never had any children. Aunt Jo was quite handy. They had a lovely house in Santa Ana. Aunt Jo love to decorate and build things too. She built at least three patios and/or decks onto the house in the MANY years that they lived there. She would build a patio, cover it , eventually enclose it and make it into another room and then she would start on another one.

This worked out well as long as they were living there. But when it came time to sell there were big problems, not only were there no permits for all these extra rooms and square footage, but much of the rooms were not up to code and they ended up tearing some of them out.

At one time, she decided to redecorate the house in an oriental style while Bob was gone and he came home to find that she had cut off the legs of all the coffee tables and painted them black. During the Mosaic craze back in the 70s, she and Bob both started doing that and almost every surface in the house was covered in mosaic. This also is OK, but the weight makes it impossible to move the things.

Aunt Jo was a traveler too. She was always very proud of the Clifford Irish roots that we have. Imagine her surprise when she went over to Ireland and found that the Cliffords had originally come over with Cromwell. Though they had assimilated and intermarried, they were part of an invading people. Dad always found that amusing and used to say that Mother was not really Irish, but "Orange."

So there are some stories about Aunt Jo. Aren't the three Aunts interesting?

Tomorrow I will tell you a bit about Aunt Claire.

Have a great Friday.

Mary